Absolutely dig the child chalkboard pattern turned adult rolling floor. Bravo, set designers!
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Children move like Adults, Adults move like Children: tUnE YarDs
Tribal oriental is how I'd describe the clickety- A capella infused sound of tUnE YarDs' 'Bizness.' Commanding vocals combined with a fun video concept puts us in touch with the child within battling the captivity of the adult world- the world of school, the world of "should" :: and she croons "Don't take my life away." Instantly relate.able.
Absolutely dig the child chalkboard pattern turned adult rolling floor. Bravo, set designers!
Absolutely dig the child chalkboard pattern turned adult rolling floor. Bravo, set designers!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
The Endless Feedback Loop: DJ Shadow Brings it back
So excited for DJ Shadow's new album "The Less You Know, the Better." Technophiles and music geeks alike can delve deeply into this one. I dig the politically ubiquitous message, and the tunes? Well Mister Shadow puts it rightly:
"I think it’s a high point. I feel better about this record than I’ve felt in a long time, and that’s not a slight to any of my other albums. I know how hard it is to satisfy myself with any project, and it’s only happened once or twice before, if at all. [Laughs] I feel really good about this one. It musically represents what I do better than anything I’ve done in a long time."
Some more choice quotes from Scott Thrill's Wired interview with Shadow (lucky bastard):
The jist of the message...
"It’s a democracy failure Davis saw crushed up close, given his proximity to Silicon Valley, where titans like Apple and Google sprouted from technological culture jammers into the undisputed masters of Wall Street’s universe. ...The smart-ass gadgets’ emotional detachment, as well as the internet age’s intensified polarization, signify what DJ Shadow calls a disturbing trend of technocultural “groupthink.”
On working with Posdnous from De La Soul ...
"I find myself missing people who are actual people rather than caricatures, especially in hip-hop. When we were talking about the track, I told him how much I miss messages in rap that had to do with a shared experience."
(For this album, Shadow also collaborated with Talib Kweli, Tom Vek, Yukimi of Little Dragon, and African Boy:
Driving the point home...
"One of the creepier moments of the last year that struck me was how my mother, who barely uses the internet, clicks on a news story, and then is guided by algorithms to the same stories and publishers. It seems innocuous and innocent enough, but it does mean she’s getting a skewed sense of the news. The more I think about it, the more I see it manifested in her. It’s pretty worrying. I don’t think people really understand what they are choosing to engage, and it’s in no corporation’s interest to inform them. It’s very similar to early television. No one wanted to talk about its potentially harmful effects. It took a long time for television to develop a conscience, and I think we’re seeing the same thing with new media."
Have a listen to the full album.
"I think it’s a high point. I feel better about this record than I’ve felt in a long time, and that’s not a slight to any of my other albums. I know how hard it is to satisfy myself with any project, and it’s only happened once or twice before, if at all. [Laughs] I feel really good about this one. It musically represents what I do better than anything I’ve done in a long time."
Some more choice quotes from Scott Thrill's Wired interview with Shadow (lucky bastard):
The jist of the message...
"It’s a democracy failure Davis saw crushed up close, given his proximity to Silicon Valley, where titans like Apple and Google sprouted from technological culture jammers into the undisputed masters of Wall Street’s universe. ...The smart-ass gadgets’ emotional detachment, as well as the internet age’s intensified polarization, signify what DJ Shadow calls a disturbing trend of technocultural “groupthink.”
On working with Posdnous from De La Soul ...
"I find myself missing people who are actual people rather than caricatures, especially in hip-hop. When we were talking about the track, I told him how much I miss messages in rap that had to do with a shared experience."
(For this album, Shadow also collaborated with Talib Kweli, Tom Vek, Yukimi of Little Dragon, and African Boy:
Driving the point home...
"One of the creepier moments of the last year that struck me was how my mother, who barely uses the internet, clicks on a news story, and then is guided by algorithms to the same stories and publishers. It seems innocuous and innocent enough, but it does mean she’s getting a skewed sense of the news. The more I think about it, the more I see it manifested in her. It’s pretty worrying. I don’t think people really understand what they are choosing to engage, and it’s in no corporation’s interest to inform them. It’s very similar to early television. No one wanted to talk about its potentially harmful effects. It took a long time for television to develop a conscience, and I think we’re seeing the same thing with new media."
Have a listen to the full album.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wacom's Inkling- Next Gen Drawing
Well I have to admit I was expecting wafer-thin electronic paper as the next big thing in drawing digitally, but Wacom's Inkling is a step in the right direction. Attach Inkling to your sketch pad and immediately transform hand-drawings into digital landscapes, layers and all. One disappointment: an eraser function is pending, so you'd basically have to sketch first and trace it over with the Inkling pen to transfer to your computer perfectly, which leaves me wondering if scanning finished drawings is really any slower than Inkling it up.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Wild Style: Amon Tobin's 'ISAM' Stage Set
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Hurricane Irene Timelapse
Well the hurricane was a lot of hype, but this timelapse footage satisfies my urge to see something deeply gorgeous from the storm. Props to the filmmaker for risking his camera in ominous weather. The lights twinkling out one by one at the end is my favorite.
NSKYC - Hurricane Irene Timelapse from Mike on Vimeo.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Focus on Tyler the Creator
Simplistic and potent video. Manicured delivery. Winner of MTV's Best New Artist award Sunday. Presenting Tyler the Creator...
Sunday, July 10, 2011
"Ever think what a sound looks like?" The Visual-Audible Gestalt
I've long been fascinated with the connection between sound and visual. From artists influenced by music, unconsciously fusing their playlists with the ink flowing out of their pens, to experimenters exploring the physics of sound waves manifested for the eye.
Below are three lovelies that speak to this undeniable but oft overlooked sensorial link.
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PAUL POPE's ROCK COMICS- More than just capturing the essence of sound in a visual format, Paul Pope infuses his early graphic novels with the energy, fashion, and attitude of rock 'n roll as a movement. Spilling over onto his personal silhouette, Pope appears to live his art, both emulating the messy-haired, tight-jean rocker look of an era lost and boldly pushing the envelope within his medium while openly advocating for the underdog that the comic format represents in the art world.
"In 2002 GEAR Magazine put Pope at # 11 in their annual TOP 100 list of "the most exciting people, places, and things on the planet," calling him "one of the most consistently inventive comics artists of his generation." In France he's been called "the Jim Morrison of comics." via Advocates for Self Government
Check out: "Heavy Liquid," Pope's graphic novel inspired by a song of the same name by Thee Hypnotics (below)
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SAND EXPERIMENTS: THE DIVINE GEOMETRY OF SOUND - This incredible video demonstrates the power of sound waves to influence the material. Robert Jourdain's analogy referring to how people use music, like drugs, for mood enhancement comes to mind: "We 'take' a certain kind of music to steer our central nervous systems toward a particular condition; hard rock as the frenzied rush of cocaine; easy-listening genres as a martini; cheery supermarket Muzak as a pick-me-up cup of coffee; cool jazz as a laid-back marijuana high; the far-flung landscapes of classical music as the fantasy realm of psychedelics." It is my personal belief that music is medicine. From subsonic frequencies below the level of hearing causing nausea by resonating with our internal organs to Shamantic drumming inducing a state of deep meditative sleep by tapping into theta brain wave, sound is a potent tool for altering our physiology and consciousness.
Check out: David Sonnenschein's book "Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema" -->
Excerpt, pg 98: "Entrainment can be refelcted in the global environment, architecture, and even in our physiology. An electromagnetic field vibrates between the ionosphere and the Earth's surface at 4-8Hz (called the Schumann resonance), which synchronizes not only with that theta consciousness state of "oneness" and harmony with the universe, but is also said to be mathematically related to many sacred sites such as Stonehenge and the Pyramids"
---
NORMAN MCLAREN's HAND DRAWN SOUNDS- Just as sound may be reconstituted into a visual counterpart, a visual component such as a drawing can be directly translated for our ears. Norman McLaren's "Pen Point Percussion" is a rare example of this principle. A student of animation, McLaren invented many groundbreaking techniques for synchronizing music with the moving image. An iconoclast's iconoclast, McLaren built the Canadian animation scene up from nothing by choosing art students he thought has animation potential based on their portfolios and interviews and encouraging them to experiment under the camera in a haven he created away from the pressures Hollywood. The studio he headed at the National Film Board of Canada thrived on the "conviction that animation should be personal, experimental, and diverse in technique," and McLaren's belief that in film "how it moved was more important than what moved" inspired him to cross past the camera directly to film stock, playing with the relationships between the size of dots drawn on film to the pitch and tone outputted when the drawings were played through a Moviola.
Below are three lovelies that speak to this undeniable but oft overlooked sensorial link.
---
PAUL POPE's ROCK COMICS- More than just capturing the essence of sound in a visual format, Paul Pope infuses his early graphic novels with the energy, fashion, and attitude of rock 'n roll as a movement. Spilling over onto his personal silhouette, Pope appears to live his art, both emulating the messy-haired, tight-jean rocker look of an era lost and boldly pushing the envelope within his medium while openly advocating for the underdog that the comic format represents in the art world.
"In 2002 GEAR Magazine put Pope at # 11 in their annual TOP 100 list of "the most exciting people, places, and things on the planet," calling him "one of the most consistently inventive comics artists of his generation." In France he's been called "the Jim Morrison of comics." via Advocates for Self Government
Check out: "Heavy Liquid," Pope's graphic novel inspired by a song of the same name by Thee Hypnotics (below)
---
SAND EXPERIMENTS: THE DIVINE GEOMETRY OF SOUND - This incredible video demonstrates the power of sound waves to influence the material. Robert Jourdain's analogy referring to how people use music, like drugs, for mood enhancement comes to mind: "We 'take' a certain kind of music to steer our central nervous systems toward a particular condition; hard rock as the frenzied rush of cocaine; easy-listening genres as a martini; cheery supermarket Muzak as a pick-me-up cup of coffee; cool jazz as a laid-back marijuana high; the far-flung landscapes of classical music as the fantasy realm of psychedelics." It is my personal belief that music is medicine. From subsonic frequencies below the level of hearing causing nausea by resonating with our internal organs to Shamantic drumming inducing a state of deep meditative sleep by tapping into theta brain wave, sound is a potent tool for altering our physiology and consciousness.
Check out: David Sonnenschein's book "Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema" -->
Excerpt, pg 98: "Entrainment can be refelcted in the global environment, architecture, and even in our physiology. An electromagnetic field vibrates between the ionosphere and the Earth's surface at 4-8Hz (called the Schumann resonance), which synchronizes not only with that theta consciousness state of "oneness" and harmony with the universe, but is also said to be mathematically related to many sacred sites such as Stonehenge and the Pyramids"
---
NORMAN MCLAREN's HAND DRAWN SOUNDS- Just as sound may be reconstituted into a visual counterpart, a visual component such as a drawing can be directly translated for our ears. Norman McLaren's "Pen Point Percussion" is a rare example of this principle. A student of animation, McLaren invented many groundbreaking techniques for synchronizing music with the moving image. An iconoclast's iconoclast, McLaren built the Canadian animation scene up from nothing by choosing art students he thought has animation potential based on their portfolios and interviews and encouraging them to experiment under the camera in a haven he created away from the pressures Hollywood. The studio he headed at the National Film Board of Canada thrived on the "conviction that animation should be personal, experimental, and diverse in technique," and McLaren's belief that in film "how it moved was more important than what moved" inspired him to cross past the camera directly to film stock, playing with the relationships between the size of dots drawn on film to the pitch and tone outputted when the drawings were played through a Moviola.
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